


araignée du matin, chagrin.

by cherrykirsch



Series: through the eyes of many [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Amélie Is In There Somewhere, Betrayal, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Crying, Extended Metaphors, F/M, Fall of Overwatch, Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Heartlessness, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Loss of Control, Love, Memory Loss, Metafiction, Moira is the Literal Devil, Murder, Post-Talon Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Pre-Canon, Pre-Talon Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes Being an Asshole, Resentment, Sobbing, Strangling, Team Talon (Overwatch), Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix-centric, angry crying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 17:52:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16123688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrykirsch/pseuds/cherrykirsch
Summary: araignée du soir,espoircauchemare.Amélie isn't who she used to be.





	araignée du matin, chagrin.

Widowmaker is standing in a room that looks familiar yet not quite so; it is vibrant with the sounds of voices, expensive gowns and perfect food, people sip champagne out of crystalline glasses. She, the outlier, blending in amongst the more refines, drinks from a glass of aged red wine as she looks around. The music filters through the air, played on an ivory piano and her eyes snap onto it, fixated as she counts the beats in her head.

_Une. Deux. Trois. Quatre._

She has to stop herself from moving her feet, her arms raising above her head along with it, she forces herself still and closes her eyes and listens, swaying gently. It is Swan Lake, and the vision of herself dancing in her mind flickers between Odette and Odile, black and white and white and black as she dances to the soft string and gentle piano.

_One. Two. Three. Four._

Something taps her glass, the sound ringing in her ears as her eyes snap open, and the something is a person; her target, Markus Kowalski, is looking at her, the rim of his glass against hers.

And the memory fades.

“Do you like the music?” He asks, offering her a friendly smile.

“Yes,” she replies, remembering to plaster on a smile at the end. “It reminds me of something I can’t quite remember.”

He just gives her a glittering flash of pearly white teeth. “I’m sure it’ll come back to you.”

That’s just the thing, it will never come back to her, everything is a blur of blood and bodies and a moment of feeling like forgetting or not remembering. But she doesn’t say this. She smiles.

“I’m sure it will.” She agrees instead, trying her level best to sound convincing.

She scarcely realises she has finished her wine before Markus takes the glass from her hand and offers her his instead, she looks down at it and then back up into his eyes.

“Madame,” he says in his best impersonation of a French accent, and Widowmaker gets chills. “May I ask you to dance? And ask for your name.”

She places her hand in his. “Lucile.” She says—lies, and he smiles. “And yes, we may dance.”

He leads her to the middle of the dancefloor and she knows she has trapped him in her web.

* * *

“Dance with me, _ma chérie_.” Gerard says, smiling so handsomely as he offers Amélie his hand. He is the picture of perfection to her in his tuxedo, lapel overflowing with a white lily. “It’s your day and you look so beautiful.”

She is in white lace and silk and sparkling tulle, a beautiful bride. No longer Amélie Guillard, but Amélie Lacroix, and she takes the hand of the love of her life, allowing him to help her to her feet.

“You know I love to dance.” She says simply, a beautiful smile across her painted lips as she follows him onto the dancefloor, feeling the eyes from all angles. “Are you not nervous? Dancing in front of so many people?”

They take their positions under the canopy of white and glittering fairy lights, his hand on her waist and her hand on his shoulder, and he gives her a reassuring smile. “A little.” He admits, a whisper. “Dancing is not like public speaking.”

The music starts, slow and sweet and Amélie smiles at him. “Don’t worry, mon chéri,” She says softly as they begin to move. “It’s just you and I.”

Gerard smiles, and to her he looks so stupidly in love.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Just us.”

And he leans down to capture her lips in a kiss of cake frosting and fizzy champagne. 

* * *

Widowmaker is being kissed, champagne and red wine pungent on her tongue, by Markus in a secluded corner of his house, and she feels breathless and close to tears. Because it is wrong, his lips interlocked with hers, the touch of his fingers on her skin. And then she pulls back, chest heaving as a single tear drips down her cheek. Markus wipes it away gently with his thumb, and although the touch should be comforting it feels so indescribably wrong.

In a moment of clarity, she knows why.

“You’re not him.” She manages as Markus frowns. “You’re not Gerard.”

She kills him before he can answer, a knife across his throat that send blood spilling onto the floor and her dress, and she sobs, collapsing into a pile on the floor as she shuts down completely.

Beneath her midnight blue gloves her fingertips are stained blue, as if she is frost bitten though she doesn’t feel cold, not anymore; and, inside her chest where her heart beat is barely there, and as she cries it aches painfully in her chest.

* * *

Widowmaker knows what it feels like to be lost inside yourself, forgotten, blank, something that doesn’t feel but kills with relish. She knows, deep down, that she hasn’t always been this way, she used to be softer; but she doesn’t remember her past, a ‘before’ if there ever was one, all she knows is the cold, the numbness, the harsh, sharp edge of her function.

She knows there was someone who she loved, she remembers the feeling of her hands squeezing his neck—but she is blank and she killed her own husband.

Like a spider, the ones she used to be afraid of.

They don’t feel, you see, they don’t feel the cold. All they know is to kill and spin their webs, they feel no emotions, their hearts never beat. Now, she is the spider, the deadly huntress who feels the most alive at the moment of the kill.

_What went wrong?_

* * *

Amélie is strangling her husband, her hands squeezing and squeezing as her nails dig into his skin, draw blood, and he is struggling but cannot get out of the position she has forced him in to. Yet, still, he does not push her, claw her, reach for the gun hidden in the bedside table.  
She didn’t cuff his hands purposely – ‘slip of the mind,’ she could say later, it’s the only freedom her conditioning allows – and he clings at her hands, tries to pull them from his slowly bruising neck.

And he stares at her with wide horrified eyes, and the expression kills her.

“Fight back.” She snarls, her voice a slow drawl. “Fight back, _tu chie_.”

He opens his mouth, tries to force out some words and Amélie’s hands work on their own, pressing down harder on his throat as her eyes burn with tears. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, but every cell in her body cries out to finish the job.

His nails have ripped her favourite night gown.

“Fight back!” She screams in frustration, shaking his furiously by the neck as her voice rings like a bell in her ears. “Don’t be a fucking coward, fight back! Kick me, scratch me, struggle! Don’t just sit there and take it!”

He looks at her so sadly, rips her nightgown right up the leg, and tries to choke out words as he hands press down harder, her nails puncturing his jugular. 

“You stupid fool,” She snarls, a scowl curling her lips in a grotesque smile. “You stupid, lovesick fool—you’d rather let your wife kill you than kill her.”

Gerard looks at her, lifts a hand from her wrists to wipe a tear from her cheek with a thumb. “L…Love… you…” He chokes out and Amélie breaks, tears spilling down her cheeks. “A… Am… élie…” 

“Fucking imbecile, don’t let me kill you!” Her voice cracks, collapsing onto his chest as she crushes his neck with her weight. “Why… _why don’t you fight back_ …?”

Her voice is lost in the sound of Gerard choking and her own, uncontrollable sobs as he goes limp beneath her, it is only then that she finally let’s go and allows her tears to stain the front of his pyjamas as she clutches at the cotton.

“I fucking hate you!” She screams into Gerard’s body, his lips still parted from his last breath, his eyes open and staring blankly at the ceiling. “You didn’t fight back. You stupid, stupid man.”

But she doesn’t believe herself, and, before she disappears out of the window, she leaves one last kiss on his still warm lips and tucks him safely back into bed. 

* * *

Ana fucking Amari recognises her, and she sees it through the broken sight in her helmet; she sees the shock plain on her face, the biotic rifle lowering as she looks at her – at Widowmaker, the spider trapped in her own web.

Her lips form a name; ‘Amélie’, the one Talon still calls her sometimes and her blood boils, she raises her rifle and takes the shot. She watches as the bullet pierces Amari’s eye and as she falls back, immobile. She feels nothing but the satisfaction of taking a great shot and eliminating a target, and she knows that the realisation of her past identity will die with Amari.

She doesn’t need Morrison or Reyes after her.

A small part of her wishes that Amari hadn’t missed and had killed her instead of damaging her helmet. The rest of her fucking hates the infernal, interfering woman.

She doesn’t check the body when she leaves. 

* * *

Reyes— Reaper now, tells her that he’s hunting Morrison, he says that Overwatch is disbanded, and he compliments her on the execution of Lacroix. She wants him to go away, but they have to work together from now on and so she is resigned to listening to him. 

“What happened to you?” He asks her.

“I could ask the same thing.” She replies dryly, pauses. “I realised the way the world should be, the way I should be.”

Reaper nods, his hands curling in and out of fists, pain evident in his voice. She wonders what really happened and suspects Moira had something to do with it, she envies his ability to feel.

“Overwatch can rot in hell, I always thought so.” Reaper growls, his voice low and dangerous. “Lacroix was the first step to better a world of our creation.”

 _How fucking pretentious_ , she thinks. So, she says it and Reaper chuckles, low and knowing.

“You killed Amari,” he says and she stops. “How did you feel? Didn’t you feel guilty? Some kind of remorse inside yourself?” 

“No,” she says bluntly. “I don’t feel anything. Did you feel anything hunting Morrison?” 

Reaper grins beneath his mask, and she knows because she can hear it. “I felt fucking fantastic.” He says, alive. “It was vengeance.”

Dead, Widowmaker considers this. “We’re nothing alike.” She says.

Reaper tilts his head. “I never said we were similar.”

She scowls. _Fucking smartass_.

“I hope you die.” She tells him very honestly.

“I hope you choke.” Reaper replies, equally as honestly, and Widowmaker stares. “That’s how you killed Lacroix right? By strangling him to death; he was a foolish man.”

Widowmaker lunges at Reaper, tumbling to the floor as he disappears into black smoke and reappears behind her. She clenches her hands into fists. “You know nothing about Gerard.”

Reaper snorts. “I know enough.” He says, and then he rests a clawed hand on her shoulder. “Did I hit a soft spot? Moira should have that fixed—” 

Widowmaker reels around and clocks Reaper in the face so hard his mask shatters, half of it clattering to the floor at her feet. Beneath the mask his skin is scarred and damaged and constantly in a state of disintegrating and reforming, and she realises that Moira fucked them both over.

“You dare, and I will make you regret ever being born.” She hisses and Reaper offers her a pained smile.

“I already do.” He says and when Widowmaker fists her hand in his black cloak he raises his hands in surrender. “I won’t tell her. You can calm down.” 

* * *

Widowmaker hates Moira as much as she is able to.

She is condescending and conniving, and the general poison to what Widowmaker would consider an average, if not pleasant, day. But she is hooked up to one of Moira’s infernal, life-sucking machines and Moira is leering over her, acting like a general leech of society and her pleasant day.

“So,” she begins, taking a seat in the office chair beside the table Widowmaker is lying on. “Amélie. How are you feeling?”

Widowmaker looks at her, scowls at Moira’s grin. “I don’t.” She says. “That’s the point.”

Moira writes that down and Widowmaker wants to snap her pen in half. “Everything alright in the cerebral department?” She asks and Widowmaker raises an eyebrow. “You’re very sure you’re not feeling?”

Widowmaker grits her teeth. “Nothing.” She manages.

“Spectacular.” Moira replies.

Widowmaker looks at her. “What did you do to Reaper?” She asks, and Moira looks at her, slowly setting her pen down as she smiles as steeples her fingers. “He’s not… Reyes.”

“I wouldn’t expect him to be.” Moira says and Widowmaker scowls. “To answer your question; I did what he asked, what he came to me for. I assure that he wanted everything he got from me, Amélie.”

Widowmaker looks straight at the wall. “I wasn’t worried about that.” She says.

“You worry?” Moira asks.

“A turn of phrase.” Widowmaker says with a roll of her eyes, shrugging. “I think a lot, about Reyes. I don’t remember much. But he thinks Morrison is still alive.”

Moira fiddles with the machine, and something filters into Widowmaker’s blood stream. “And what do you think?” She asks. 

Widowmaker glares at her. “Who are you? My fucking psychiatrist?”

“I’d like to believe I’m your friend.” Moira says. “At the very least your doctor. And you can tell me anything.”

 _Quand l'enfer gèle_.

Widowmaker fixes her jaw and looks deep into Moira’s non-existent soul. “I think that Morrison is still alive, I think that Overwatch will crawl out of the pit we put them in and I think—” She stops, very suddenly. “I think that I’d like to go to bed." 

Moira smiles and unhooks her from the machine, watching as Widowmaker stretches out her arm and flexes her hand and then stands.

“Amélie?” Moira says and Widowmaker pause son her way to the door, not turning around. “Do not hesitate to come to me if you experience any problems cerebrally, or generally.”

Widowmaker nods stiffly at the door. “Understood.”

She leaves the door open after she strides out of it, petty though it may be.

* * *

Amélie stands in the doorway to their bedroom, dressed in an old dressing gown, and Gerard lies on the bed, staring adoringly at her as she poses like a supermodel, smiling as she looks at him.

“Stylish,” she says, a grin on her lips. “No?”

Gerard chuckles. “Very much so, _mon cher_.” He says as Amélie approaches the bed. “What are you wearing? _Lacroix Loungewear_? Very stylish.”

She takes his hand in hers, interlocking their fingers as she leans down to capture his lips in a sweet kiss. “I’m glad you approve.” She says quietly. “I’ve missed you. What with work and all.” 

Gerard kisses her back, lifts a hand to caress her cheek. “I’ve missed you too. We’ve both been too busy.” He says, and then he smiles. “I took Ana, Jack and Gabriel to your ballet; they thought you looked so amazing dancing.”

Amélie perks up at that, an amazed smile curling her lips. “In the Mezzanine seats?” She asks, gasping in delight when Gerard nods. “Oh, I’m so glad they enjoyed it! I adore dancing for people; tell them they’re welcome to come along anytime they wish.” 

Gerard smiles as Amélie seats herself on his lap, her arms around his neck as she nuzzles closer to him. “Let’s just stay in today, Amélie.” He says and she looks up at him in surprise. “Let’s just enjoy each other’s company.”

“But what about dinner?” She asks, smiling. 

“Who cares?” Gerard tell her, gently kissing her cheek. “We can always cancel.”

She giggles and kisses his cheek back, feeling the rough scratch of a barely-there beard against her lips. “Okay.” She agrees happily. “Let’s stay in. TV?” She asks and when Gerard nods she dives into his bedside table for the remote—where it always is.

And then she falters, and Gerard is trying to pull her hand back from the open drawer. She resists and stares into the bottom of the drawer, pulls out something that is definitely not the remote. 

“Gerard,” Amélie says. “Why is there a gun in your bedside table?”

Gerard sighs, but doesn’t try and take the gun from her, he just turns it over to make sure the safety is on. “I’m sorry, Amélie.” He says, his hands rested on his hips. “I get worried. My job… it comes with its risks, and we decided that we didn’t need 24/7 security; I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

Amélie looks down at the gun, feeling as if she is holding a small, dead animal. “I detest guns.” She says simply. 

“I know.” Gerard replies equally simply. “The gun doesn’t make me feel safe. Someone could shoot me with it before I could shoot them. But I said I would keep it.” 

She presses the gun into his hand. “Lock it in the drawer, please.” She says, and Gerard nods, stowing the gun away and locking the drawer. “Work shouldn’t have a place in our bedroom. Guns shouldn’t either.”

Gerard gently strokes her back, nods and gives her a reassuring smile. “I promise you; you will never see it again.” He says solemnly and Amélie smiles.

“Thank you, Gerard.” She says, and when she leans in to kiss his lips, she allows it to linger, for him to taste toothpaste on her mouth. “I love you.”

Gerard presses a soft, lingering kiss to her collarbone exposed by the neck of the dressing gown, and takes her hands in his, kissing her knuckles. “I love you too.” He says softly. “So very much, _ma lune et mes étoiles_. My darling, my beautiful dancer.”

Amélie giggles, a hand in front of her lips. “You flatter me.” She says, looking at him so stupidly in love. “You’re so… indescribable, so purely spectacular.”

“Who’s flattering who now?” He asks and Amélie chuckles, kisses the very corner of his lips. “Amélie?” He asks, when they sit in silence, basking in each other’s company.

“Hmm?”

Gerard looks at her, lifts his hands from hers to cup her face oh-so gently. “Have you ever thought about having children?” The question shocks her so simply she just stress, and Gerard falters. “At some point, in the future, I mean; I know we need to talk about it more—” 

“Gerard?” She asks and he stops, looks at her. “Do you really want children with me?”

Gerard opens his mouth to say something long-winded probably and then stops, looks very seriously at Amélie. “I…” He says softly. “Of course. I want everything with you.”

It is then that Amélie begins to cry, smiling as she holds Gerard’s face and kisses it softly and lovingly. “I want children with you, Gerard.” She says quietly and Gerard smiles, brilliantly and brightly, laughing as she holds her so close.

He kisses her, and she kisses back, and when he pulls back he looks ravenous. “Should we start right now?” 

And Amélie nods, dropping the dressing gown onto the bedroom floor, their bodies warm together, his lips on hers. 

* * *

When she returns to him, it is Christmas and she finally remembers—sort of, she remembers bits and pieces here and there, of Gerard and her old life. The name ‘Amélie’ is no longer bitter on her tongue, and her favourite memory is of Gerard saying it.  
She waits until the snow is falling and there is no one left in the cemetery before she visits, and she stands in front of his grave and wonders what went wrong.

Maybe it was her past self, with no use but her intimate relationship with Gerard Lacroix—she knows Talon wouldn’t have taken her otherwise. They turned her into a monster, a widow maker, a heartless spider.

The red rose in her hand digs its thorns into her fingers, unwilling to let go as red-purple droplets of viscous blood paint the leaves. But she realises she must let go, eventually, sometime soon.

There are a thousand things she wants to say, but she doesn’t have the heart to say any of them. Not to him. But at the very end of it, there has always been one thing that she always has wanted to say to him, meant to even, when the time is right. She lays the rose down on the grave, bends down to brush the snow and frost from the front of his polished marble gravestone, her fingers tracing the letters.

**_Gerard Lacroix, 2041-2076._ **

**_“_ ** _There shall be no darkness nor dazzling,_  
_But one equal light;  
_ _No noise nor silence, but one equal music. **”**_ ****

If she thinks hard enough, she can still remember the minute details of his face, the way his smile, his eyes look when he sees her. He is so splendidly alive in the facets of her mind, but the gravestone underneath her fingers tells the cold, hard truth and is overcome with him; with her love for him, with the thought and sense of him.

 “Gerard,” she says, and the sound of her voice is almost lost amongst the snow but she knows that he hears her. “I’m so sorry.”

There is no reply. There never is, not that she’s ever said anything before.

Really, that’s all she needs to say. He knows that she loved—loves him, the term still confuses her, she can’t feel and she can never feel but she clings onto the memory of feeling, of loving Gerard so much it hurt as her only lifeline.

He loved her so much it killed him.

Her mother (just a faint recollection now) had once told her that spiders felt no emotion, that their hearts never beat and that they could only kill, and frequently killed their mates; and Amélie used to be afraid of spiders.

Except that she wasn’t anymore, because she finally understood. At the moment of the kill, they are never more alive. Amélie—Widowmaker regrets that kill every day of her life.

And it’s the only thing she feels.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: [ cherry-kirsch ](cherry-kirsch.tumblr.com) || twitter: [ cherriwrites ](https://twitter.com/cherriwrites)


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